Robert and Nancy Johnson had met in college. Two months after they were married, Nancy was pregnant with their first child and she dropped out of school to become a homemaker. This, she felt, was her true calling. Mrs Johnson was a God-fearing woman, determined to walk the path of righteousness no matter the cost. Aria couldn’t help but feel that under her carefully perfected exterior, there was someone inside of her screaming. She strived toward goodness and toward making everyone around her good too, with a verve that was downright exhausting. It was especially exhausting for Mr Johnson.
Mr Johnson was a shell of a man. Even though he had grown up Christian too, the veracity of his wife’s faith kept him imprisoned beneath a wardrobe of cardigans and khaki dress pants. Purity was such a heavy expectation from the society that he found himself in that all of his deeper, carnal urges had to be suppressed and denied. But, as Aria soon found out, suppressed urges cannot be suppressed forever. If they are, they tend to be indulged in secret. Mr Johnson was the head of the household in title alone.
Mrs Johnson had given birth to two children before her last pregnancy, when she developed placenta accreta. The doctors had to perform a full hysterectomy to save her life. The event rocked their marriage and shook their faith. Mrs Johnson felt like God was punishing her by taking away her God-given gift to bear children. She was inconsolable for months. But when she saw the children at the group home, she spied a kind of hope. She suddenly grasped a greater vision. Her prayers were answered. She could see clearly that God had not taken her ability to bear children away to punish her. God had taken her ability to bear children away so that she could see her greater purpose, as a mother to those who have no mothers. The Johnsons had adopted a little three-year-old girl the summer before, bringing their collection of children to four before they set their sights on Aria.
The day they came to meet Aria for the first time, they brought a plate of homemade chocolate-chip cookies. Aria sat in a chair and reluctantly took one from the stack, watching the couple with an enthusiasm that was watered down by an equal amount of suspicion. A caseworker listened with a quizzical smile on her face while Mrs Johnson spoke: “The Lord has trusted us with the care of his children. We believe that by providing an example of God’s love, we are giving these children, who have had a rough start, the opportunity to know him personally.
“Through the witness of our family and the hearing of the gospel message, these children can say yes to the Lord, and because of that they have a real chance at a good life.”
Sentimental tears welled up in her eyes as she finished her message. And she stared at Aria longingly. It was arranged for Aria to move in with them the following week. That was three years ago. Aria had been living with them ever since.
CHAPTER 2
“Dinner time!” Mrs Johnson called from the bottom of the stairs.
Aria ran her fingers through the silky black fur of the cat napping on her bed. Clifford, who was the only family pet, preferred to sleep his days away in Aria’s room. Her younger siblings had named the cat after the famous cartoon Clifford the Big Red Dog, in the innocent hope that the cat would soon grow large enough to ride. Aria loved Clifford. She buried her face in his side and breathed him in, letting the inhale and exhale of his purr console her. She felt a trace of belonging with Clifford that she felt with no one else.
She walked into the little dining room adjoining the kitchen. The table was set with white plastic plates and paper napkins. To one side, a sheet cake with unlit candles took up a good portion of the table. On its surface, “Happy Birthday Aria” was piped in red gel that almost ran into Mrs Johnson’s haphazard attempt to create buttercream flowers. Aria took her usual place and watched the pans and serving bowls make their way divisively through the hyperactive movements of the other children to be placed in the center of the table. Aria loved food. It was the only thing in her life without ulterior motives. She could trust food.
Once everyone was seated, her younger sister was prompted to say grace. They all folded their arms and bowed their heads for the length of the speech. There was a palpable relief when grace was through. To Aria, grace felt like a spiritual tollbooth you had to pass through to get to where you wanted to go.
“Mom,” Aria said, “can you pass the soup?” Mrs Johnson had insisted the week after Aria moved in that she begin to call her Mom. This bothered Aria. Regardless of the fact that Lucy had abandoned her, it still felt like a betrayal to call any other woman Mother. It felt fake and contrived every time she said it.
Mrs Johnson hefted the heavy pot in Aria’s direction so she could ladle the soup into her bowl. Delicate steam wove its way through the air just above the bowl. A few dots of amber oil hovered on the surface of the broth. Aria found a bay leaf in the bowl and picked it up between her index finger and thumb. She placed it in her mouth and held it there. The sound of the room faded and gave way to the experience of it. If wisdom and perspective had a taste, she thought, it would be bay leaf. It reminded her of a candid black and white image of an old hand-hewn log cabin with its occupants, in 1800s clothing, smiling at one another. She could taste the image of a wood-burning oven at the end of summer, right before summer slowed down into fall. It tasted like a nostalgic antique.
Everyone had settled into the rhythm and quiet of consuming the meal when Mrs Johnson’s voice cut through the scene. “Aria cut first class again today.” She was aiming her statement in her husband’s direction.
He looked up from his plate. “Is that so,” he said, rolling the bite of food he had in his mouth around to make way for the words while he talked. “I’ll have a talk with her later,” he said, eyeing Aria with a disciplining stare.
The stare was like a veil concealing an intimacy that shouldn’t exist between father and daughter. Aria felt a chill go through her. She had hoped that the fact that today was her birthday would allow her more than the usual leniency for her errors. She had underestimated Mr and Mrs Johnson’s tendency to make birthdays feel like every other day of the year.
For the rest of the dinner, she was replete with unease, watching the rest of her family converse, anticipating what was to come. Oblivious to her discomfort, they laughed and talked and ate and sang her the happy birthday song as if rejoicing more in the sound of their own voices than in the celebration of Aria’s existence.
When dinner was done, the youngest kids went up to their rooms to play. Mr Johnson walked over to the television and sat down in the recliner. He pressed the buttons on the remote control until he found a golfing tournament and settled in to watch it in a fixated silence. Aria got up to help her two oldest siblings do the dishes while their mother sponged off the table. Mrs Johnson was wearing a look of self-satisfaction as she cleaned.
It was at times like this that Aria felt her lack of belonging the most. This after-dinner routine was standard procedure. Everyone seemed unbothered by the unconscious, mundane repetition. That is, everyone but her. She felt like a fish trying to make its home with a nest of birds. She couldn’t breathe in the emotional atmosphere of this house. It wasn’t the presence of emotions that bothered her. It was the lack of them. It was the vacuum of those moments where the surface veneer of a happy family sat like a film over the truth. The truth was, it was all just one giant act.